Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Thursday, May 9, 2013

Descent into Darkness

My Rabbi
wrote in our local synagogue magazine that as a youngster she was never
“allowed to say ‘I am hungry’ in front of adults” – It was in deference to
those who had experienced the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 when many Dutch scrambled
to survive starvation by eating grass.I
worked alongside of Russian factory workers who remembered the Great Patriotic
War (of 1941-1945).They still carried a hunk of bread in
their trouser-pockets. It was a habit for those who never knew
from where or even when the next meal would be.

Compare
that to the ‘me - obsessed’ generations that have followed on from the 1970’s
and we could be excused for feeling smug in our so-called moral superiority. It
is not that we are by necessity, more ethical in our behaviour but our saving
grace is our perception of consciousness.We may not follow our consciences but we are at least aware of our
actions.

The
resurrection of the Left, in particular the hard Left, is only possible because
it harnesses the frustration felt by many of us within the post-Communist consumer
driven wasteland.These comfortable followers
of liberal politics experience a deep dissatisfaction which unlike previous
generations of fascisms’ foot soldiers has not prevented them from fighting their
battles from the safety of their homes.

One
alternate justification is that we are all too easily led and a substitute for
the spiritual wilderness of our current age leads many young men and women to the
seductive embrace of a rigidly prescriptive faith such as that of the casual bigotry
of Islam or the hard left.

In any
case, extremists are only able to manipulate dissatisfaction because of the
paucity of competing philosophies, and once ensnared, the gullible are
susceptible to ethical corruption. Because
of this it would be arrogant to believe that a barren spiritual life is any
more desirous in our secular age than a life of spiritual seclusion or material
deprivation. But the opposite also applies here. It is only through knowledge that
we can choose.

During the Roman
era, two thousand years ago, allegiance to competing gods and goddesses was as
common a fashion statement as this year’s fashion labels are to us.If we no longer bend our knee to Zeus
(Jupiter) it is because we prefer football teams, pop icons and fashion
labels.In relative terms our following
of modern idols is probably no less time consuming or expensive than the latest
sculptural offering of Dionysus (Bacchus) or Aphrodite (Venus) was.We still talk about fate, we fear the tempests
and it does not matter whether they were created by nature or the gods; we have
not much more control now than we did then (when at least we could beg for the
intervention of our favourite deities).We
have bad luck or good fortune and ascribe both to something that is beyond our
control.

Perhaps the
reason that our idols are now a mindless but glittering theatre of the arcane is
that they are an alternative ritual to religion while politics is become a
passionate expression of belief.They do
not require much of our input apart from what we take out from our pocket.The competition for souls may have had its
basis in ignorance of our physical world but ‘knowledge’ was clarity in ancient
times. How are we better off today? Are
we any different now that our heads are filled with constantly changing truths
presented to us as fact? We may not be as susceptible to peripatetic
allegiances but our clarity dips into and out of focus leaving most of us
alienated from our spiritual sources, confused, frightened and insecure for the
future.It is much easier to worship
celebrity, fashions change. A life without spiritual depth still requires an
emotional anchor and it may as well be Versace or Manchester United as God or
Brahma.

And hence
the dilemma for our society.The
shallowness of contemporary society robs us of the opportunity to confront the
issues that divide us by providing us with a world of benign distractions and
credit card funded comforts on one side and on the other side, selected biases defined
by cant and comfortable prejudice.Those
people that do choose to engage with society do so from the safety of familiarity
and too often it is the extremists that define the direction because only they
care enough to scream and shout. It is society that encourages them because it
empowers them in order to render them less threatening to the majority. Their
tactics of intimidation work.With no
organised opposition to confront them their path to power is assured and like
sheep we and our descendants are skipping backwards into darkness mostly
oblivious to the gathering storm.